1. Environmental Pollutants as a Cause of
Mental Retardation
Brought to you by: Shelby Towater, Miranda Bradford
and Riley Bowers

2. Environmental Causes
• Individuals with mild intellectual disabilities, those who
require less intensive supports, make up about 90% of all
persons with MR/ID.
• The majority of those cases exhibit no evidence of organic
pathology—no brain damage or other biological problem.
• When no biological factor is evident in an individual with
mental retardation, the cause is presumed to be psychosocial
disadvantage, the combination of a poor social environment
early in the child’s life.
•Professionals sometimes use the term developmental
retardation to refer to intellectual disability thought to be
caused primarily by environmental influences such as minimal
opportunities to develop early language, child abuse and
neglect, and/or chronic social or sensory deprivation.

3. Key contributors to the cycle of environmentally caused
retardation:
1. Limited parenting practices that produce low rates of
vocabulary growth in early childhood.
2. Instructional practices in middle childhood and
adolescence that produce low rates of academic
engagement during the school years.
3. Lower rates of academic achievement and early school
failure and early school dropout.
4. Parenthood and continuance of the progression into the
next generation.

4. Prevention
• Biggest single preventive strike against mental
retardation was the development of an effective Rubella
vaccine in 1962.
-When contracted to mothers during the first 3 months of
pregnancy, it causes severe damage in 10% to 40% of
unborn children.
• Invasive diagnostic tests, such as Amniocentesis and
Chorionic Villi Sampling, can confirm the presence of
various disorders.
• In the United States, women who are at risk for giving
birth to a baby with a disabilities on the basis of the
parents’ genetic backgrounds are commonly referred to
genetic counseling.

5. Your pregnancy, the environment, and your baby.
• Toxic exposure through maternal substance
abuse such as alcohol and environmental
pollutants are two major causes of preventable
intellectual disabilities.
•Alcohol
• Smoking
• Drugs
• Poor nutrition

6. Alcohol, pregnancy and your child.
•Alcohol is now recognized as the leading teratogen to which the fetus is likely to
be exposed.
•The most severe result of alcohol use is fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), a lifelong
condition characterized by poor growth (in the womb, after birth, or both),
abnormal facial features, and damage to the central nervous system.
• The central nervous system damage may include mental retardation, delays in
physical development, vision and hearing problems, and a variety of behavioral
problems.
• Frequent drinking (seven or more alcoholic drinks per week, including liquor,
wine, and/or beer) or binge drinking (four or more drinks on any one occasion)
greatly increases the risk that your baby will suffer from FAS.

7. Smoking while pregnant? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
•Smoking cigarettes is probably the No. 1 cause of adverse outcomes for babies.
• When you smoke during pregnancy, that toxic brew gets into your bloodstream,
your baby's only source of oxygen and nutrients.
• Cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, including truly nasty
things like cyanide, lead, and at least 60 cancer-causing compounds. .
• A shortage of oxygen can have devastating effects on your baby's growth and
development.
• On average, smoking during pregnancy doubles the chances that a baby will be
born too early or weigh less than 5 1/2 pounds at birth. Smoking also more than
doubles the risk of stillbirth.

8. Say NO to drugs.
•Studies have shown that consumption of illegal drugs during pregnancy can
result miscarriage, low birth weight, premature labor, placental abruption, fetal
death, and even maternal death.
• Marijuana, like cigarette smoke, contains toxins that keep your baby from
getting the proper supply of oxygen that he or she needs to grow.
• According to the Organization of Teratology Information Services (OTIS), during
the early months of pregnancy cocaine exposure may increase the risk of
miscarriage. Later in pregnancy, cocaine use can cause placental abruption.
• Using heroin during pregnancy increases the chance of premature birth, low birth
weight, breathing difficulties, low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), bleeding within the
brain (intracranial hemorrhage), and infant death.

9. Malnutrition
•A poor pregnancy diet can lead to various nutritional
deficiencies.
• Eating too little (or too little of the needed foods)
increases the risk of giving birth to a baby who may be
born too soon or too small, have birth defects, or have
breathing and blood chemistry problems at birth.
• You may develop malnutrition if you lack of a single
vitamin in the diet.

10. What causes an intellectual disability?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyjFJ19DF9Y

11. Works Cited
"Drinking Alcohol during Pregnancy | BabyCenter." BabyCenter | Homepage -
Pregnancy, Baby, Toddler, Kids. Baby Center, Oct. 2011. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.
<http://www.babycenter.com/0_drinking-alcohol-during-pregnancy_3542.bc>.
"Using Illegal Drugs during Pregnancy : American Pregnancy Association :
American Pregnancy Association." Promoting Pregnancy Wellness : American
Pregnancy Association. American Pregnancy Association, May 2011. Web. 15
Nov. 2011.
<http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancyhealth/illegaldrugs.html>.
Woolston, Chris. "How Smoking during Pregnancy Affects You and Your Baby |
BabyCenter." BabyCenter | Homepage - Pregnancy, Baby, Toddler, Kids. Baby
Center, Apr. 2011. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. <http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-
smoking-during-pregnancy-affects-you-and-your-baby_1405720.bc>.